A planned vote in the Judiciary Committee on the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) was recently delayed in the Senate. The bill was introduced by Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., in 2023. It...more
GenAI, or Generative AI, has seen a surge in patenting activity with China leading the way in filing patent applications for this technology. The landscape analysis by WIPO reveals Tencent, Ping An Insurance Group, and Baidu...more
7/8/2024
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
China ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Life Sciences ,
Machine Learning ,
Patent Applications ,
Patents ,
Personalized Medicine ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Popular ,
Prescription Drugs ,
WIPO
Between 2014-2023, China has filed more patent applications (38,000) covering Generative AI (GenAI) technology than another other country, six times more than second place United States, as reported by the World Intellectual...more
Precision or personalized medicine seeks to find the right treatment for each patient at the right time based on the patient’s genes, proteins and other personal characteristics. The approach has been successfully used to...more
The USPTO recently released a Report to Congress (“Report”) detailing the results of its call for public comments regarding the impact of U.S. jurisprudence on patent subject matter eligibility. The Report is responsive to...more
On December 12, 2019, an outbreak of a severe pneumonia broke out of Wuhan, China. The causative agent of the outbreak was determined to be a coronavirus, an enveloped positive- and single-stranded RNA virus that infects...more
In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208 (2014) (“Alice”) held that technologies that merely implemented an abstract idea with a generic computer were not eligible for patent...more
In Illumina, Inc. v. Ariosa Diagnositcs, Inc., (Fed. Cir. Slip Op. 2019-1419, March 17, 2020) the Federal Circuit held that process claims that exploit the discovered size differences between fetal and maternal DNA in serum...more
4/1/2020
/ Dismissals ,
Doctrine of Equivalents ,
Failure To State A Claim ,
Inter Partes Review (IPR) Proceeding ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Reversal ,
USPTO
In OSI Pharmaceuticals, LLC v. Aoptex Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2018-1925, Oct. 4, 2019), the Federal Circuit reversed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (Board) decision that certain claims of US Patent No. 6,900,221 were...more
10/16/2019
/ America Invents Act ,
Form 10-K ,
Obviousness ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patents ,
Personalized Medicine ,
Pharmaceutical Industry ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Prior Art ,
Retroactive Application ,
Reversal
In a non-precedential opinion, the Federal Circuit held as patent-ineligible patent claims to personalized therapy to treat patients who would benefit from inhaled nitric oxide treatment and withhold treatment from patients...more
In Allergan Sales, LLC v. Sandoz, Inc., (Fed. Cir. 2018-2207, Aug. 29, 2019), the Federal Circuit held that “wherein” clauses in a patent claim were limitations because the “wherein” elements were material to patentability....more
Senators Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) released a plan to revise Section 101 of Title 35 of the U.S. Code relating to U.S. patent law, reports Alexis Kramer of Bloomberg Law. As reported by Ms. Kramer, the...more
A patent claiming methods to integrate physiological treatment data remotely using a computer was held invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. University of Florida Research Foundation, Inc. v. General Electric Company, et al. (Fed....more
On January 4, 2019, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced revised guidance for determining subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for computer-implemented inventions (Guidance). The Guidance takes...more
In Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. West-Ward Pharmaceuticals Int’l Ltd, Slip Op. (Nos. 2016-2707, 2016-2708, April 13, 2018) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit provided useful guidance for patentees seeking to...more
5/29/2018
/ Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) ,
CLS Bank v Alice Corp ,
Mayo v. Prometheus ,
Method Claims ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Pharmaceutical Patents ,
Prior Art ,
Product of Nature Doctrine ,
Section 101
On August 2nd 2017, the USPTO hosted a Bicoastal Biotechnology/Chemical/Pharmaceutical Customer Partnership that focused on the USPTO’s current thinking on patent-eligibility. The meeting followed the USPTO’s June 25th, 2017...more
10/7/2017
/ Abstract Ideas ,
CLS Bank v Alice Corp ,
Inventions ,
Judicial Exception ,
Life Sciences ,
Mayo v. Prometheus ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patented Medicines ,
Patents ,
Product of Nature Doctrine ,
Section 101 ,
USPTO
In Stanford University v. The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Fed Cir. No 2015-2011, June 27, 2017), the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded interference decisions on the ground the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”)...more
On June 29th, 2016, the USPTO announced the Cancer Immunotherapy Pilot Program to allow expedited examination of patent applications that pertain to cancer immunotherapy. Under the Program and after proper petition, the USPTO...more
In an appeal characterized as “unusual,” the Federal Circuit affirmed the grant of a preliminary injunction, holding it likely that plaintiff patent holder would succeed on the merits its claim of infringement of a patent...more
In Life Technologies Corp. v. Promega Corp., Slip Op. 14-1538 (Feb. 22, 2017), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the supply of a single component of a multicomponent invention for manufacture abroad does not give rise to...more
3/9/2017
/ Appeals ,
Component Parts Doctrine ,
Cross-Border Transactions ,
Exports ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
IP License ,
Life Technologies Corp v Promega Corp ,
Manufacturer Liability ,
Patent Act ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patents ,
Reversal ,
SCOTUS
Apple successfully invalidated three patents for failure to recite patent eligible subject matter. Apple, Inc. v. Ameranth, Inc., 2015-1792, 2015-1793 (Fed. Cir. 2016). The patents relate to synchronous communication systems...more
2/23/2017
/ Abstract Ideas ,
Appeals ,
Apple ,
Claim Construction ,
Computer-Related Inventions ,
Covered Business Method Patents ,
Patent Trial and Appeal Board ,
Patent-Eligible Subject Matter ,
Patents ,
Personalized Medicine ,
Section 101 ,
Standard of Review
In Yeda Research and Development Co., Ltd. v. Abbott GMBH & Co. KG, Slip Op. 2015-1662 (Fed. Cir. 2016), the Federal Circuit held that a claim to an isolated protein described by its partial amino acid sequence satisfies 35...more
Fetal diagnostic pioneer Ariosa Diagnostics lost its latest attempt to invalidate competitor Verinata Health’s U.S. Patent No. 8,318,430, “Methods of Fetal Abnormality Detection.” The USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board...more
On May 4, 2016, the USPTO released a “May 2016 Subject Matter Eligibility Update” (“Update”) providing guidance to patent examiners on formulating a subject matter eligibility rejection and evaluating an applicant’s response...more
Diagnostic medicine is experiencing new challenges at the USPTO and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Under a new FDA proposal, laboratory developed test providers, previously exempt from FDA oversight, must now...more
9/24/2015
/ 510(k) RTA ,
Diagnostic Tests ,
FDA Approval ,
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ,
Medical Devices ,
Patent Infringement ,
Patent Invalidity ,
Patent Litigation ,
Patents ,
Personalized Medicine ,
Premarket Approval Applications ,
Proposed Regulation ,
Regulatory Oversight ,
USPTO